Fly Like an Eagle: Steve Miller Band

Once a group made it on the cunning guiles of a manager, depending on how many dolly types from bopper magazines could be wined and dined and fucked, depended on whether or not the groups next single or album got a mention in the mass gossip column.

Once this was the way in which these things were done don't you know.

Then along came a thing called taste and man made a fortune. These men called themselves arrangement & rythm or A & R as they become known - one of the biggest of them being Phil Spector.

A group would be signed to record and the first thing was too get the A & R men to see the group were playing the right chords. So the producer would only have to worry about getting the group to play the right chords in the right sequence. All this once sold records.

Ah, but our story does not stop there. Man being such an inventive being and technical innovations being what they are these days, he decided to give the job to machines. These machines exist in the form of sixteen track recording monsters which are giving birth to bigger monsters from the track engineers and master mixers.

These people have become the replacement of A & R men and teeny magazines and the like. Unfortunately a record album can now be made or broken in the studio, by the studio. Steve Miller is fully aware of this and hence he used the best studios, equipment and technical staff to present us with his latest album "Fly Like An Eagle".

Any awares, bouquets, or the like should go to the technical staff or the monster recording equipment and studios certainly not to Miller or his band.

This is one example of brilliant poigant lyrics -they don't even rhyme.

The sound on disc is clear and beautifully balanced. But for all of this it has a tired bored feeling coming over. I could almost picture Mallaber and Turner (The other members of Miller's band) putting their track down all on the same afternoon and leaving Miller to slave over a hot mixer for the next six weeks. A very unmemorable album from the band that gave us 'The Joker" album.